by Mary Stone
“It could have been a lot worse.” Aiden made the statement as much to pull himself back to the present as he did to reassure Noah and Winter. “Local LEOs did their job, and they did it well. Now, it’s time for us to do ours. They’ve had a busy enough night, so let’s go in there and get Kilroy so they won’t have to do any more work when they get here.”
“Agreed,” Noah said. “What’s the plan, then? Best as I can tell, that place has two entrances: one at the front, and another around back.”
“He wants me.” For emphasis, Winter poked herself in the Kevlar vest. “I should go in first and get his attention.”
“What?” Mouth agape, Noah turned his incredulous stare to the woman at his side.
“You? Why?” Aiden managed to force a hint of irritability into his tone.
“He wants me,” she repeated.
“So?” Noah’s brows drew together as he narrowed his eyes.
“Believe it or not, I’m with Dalton this time. You’re out of your mind, Winter. The fact that he wants to murder you seems like a pretty good reason for you not to go in there and walk right up to him.”
Crossing both arms over her black jacket, Winter shook her head. “No, that’s not the way he works. He’s a serial killer, and he has a specific ritual he adheres to whenever he kills a victim. Just trust me when I say that I know what’s going through his head. He’s a serial killer, right? By definition, he has a really specific ritual he sticks to. His ritual isn’t to shoot me in the face as soon as he sees me.
“And he knows something about my brother. I know he does. If we barge in there and go all sharpshooter, I’ll never know what that is. I’ll never even know where he’s fucking buried! And it’s not just me, you two know that, right? How many unnamed victims do you think are out there? How many families has he ripped apart?
“I’m going to go in there first because he won’t shoot me, and because I know I can get him to talk. I can get him to tell me what happened to my brother, and then we can take him out of here in cuffs so all those other families can get the closure they need too.”
She let her intense stare linger on Noah first, and then she turned those vivid blue eyes to him.
He felt like that look had suspended him in time. It was a look he had seen before, a look of cold determination that bordered on blatant stubbornness. He hated that steely resolve as much as he fucking loved it, dreaded it as much as he admired it. But in that moment, he realized the feeling that clamped its hand around his throat was more than admiration.
His effort to keep in contact with Winter over the years had been borne from more than just his desire to erase a blemish from his file. Maybe that was what drove his initial decision, but relationships—professional or otherwise—were rarely static. And how could they be static when so much had changed over the past decade?
No, he thought. What he felt for her now had gone far above and beyond a professional admiration, or even a platonic friendship. He didn’t know what hole he had fallen into, but he would deal with it later.
“Are you sure?” He had no idea how much time had elapsed between the end of her proclamation and his question.
For all he knew, they might have stood there with their eyes locked on one another for an hour. Maybe while they watched one another, Noah Dalton had gone to the church, killed Douglas Kilroy, and brought Bree back to the car. For a split second, the outlandish scenario felt so likely that he glanced over to make sure Bree was not beside Noah.
Agent Stafford was not there. Instead, he spotted a flash of annoyance behind the taller man’s green eyes.
“I’m positive,” Winter replied. “Look, I can’t explain it, but, when I was passed out, it’s like I saw what he’s got planned. The reason he took Bree was because he wanted to get to me, and the reason he’s here at this church is because he feels like he’s bringing this whole ‘mission’ of his full circle. He’s ending it all where it started, or at least that’s what he thinks.
“And you know what else I’m sure about? I’m sure that if either of you two walks in there and he sees you, he’s going to shoot first and ask questions later. I’m the one he wants, so I’m going to make it seem like he’s about to get it. You two need to stay out of sight. If he sees you, he will kill you.”
After another abrasive silence, Aiden nodded.
“What?” Noah guffawed, disbelief and ire both prevalent on his unshaven face.
“She knows more about Kilroy than either of us, Dalton.” As Aiden spoke, he turned his head to meet Noah’s glare head-on. He brushed past the venomous look and continued. “I get that this isn’t a personal thing for anyone anymore, or maybe it’s even more of a personal thing for all of us, but listen to me, Dalton. She’s right. You know she’s right, and I know she’s right. He won’t open fire if she walks in there first, but if either of us tries to, he will.”
“You don’t know—”
“And these weapons.” Aiden plowed on, pausing to gesture to the carbine over his shoulder. “These weapons are way more effective than a Glock nine-mil at a range. I know you knew that, and I know you know that they make us the best option to hang back and provide backup in case something goes wrong. Our help is thirty to forty-five minutes out, and that’s a generous estimate. If we don’t go in there now, then we’re gambling with Bree’s life. And I don’t know about you, Dalton, but I will not be responsible for an agent’s death, do you understand me?”
Noah’s jaw was like granite. “Yes, sir.”
Aiden wasn’t finished yet. “We don’t have the luxury of time to sit out here and skim through blueprints so we can make our entrance as effective as possible. We need to make the best out of what we’ve got right now, or Bree is going to fucking die. None of us, Winter and Bree included, want Winter to get hurt. And she won’t. Winter leads, and then Dalton, you find somewhere in there to post up. You’re a better shot than either of us, and you’ve got a weapon capable of precision from a greater distance than a handgun. As long as we back her up, she’s going to be fine. As long as we work together, we’ll all be fine.”
Aiden thought he might have spent an eternity staring down the former Marine. With a blustery sigh, Noah finally rubbed his eyes and nodded his assent.
“Yeah,” Noah started. “Yeah, damn it. All right. You’re right. Both of you.”
“Winter, you go through the front entrance. Dalton and I will go through the back, and we’ll stick to the shadows. We don’t want him to know we’re there. Winter, you keep him distracted and we’ll get Bree, and then before he notices she’s gone, we take him down, one way or another. We do whatever we can to make sure we take him alive, but we aren’t going to risk anyone’s life to do it, understood?”
Winter nodded. “Understood.”
37
The crunch of dirt and debris beneath Winter’s booted feet was quiet, but to her, the sound might as well have been a series of firecrackers. As she neared the end of a wide hall, she flattened her back against the peeling drywall and crept to the edge. For several agonizing seconds, she held her breath to strain her hearing. She thought she might have caught the distant scuffle of a footstep, but the likelihood that the sound had emanated from the crumbling building was just as high.
Flexing her fingers against the textured grip of her service weapon, she grated her teeth together and scooted until her shoulder was flush with the door frame. A wide ray of white light fell along the splintered floorboards of the hallway, and she narrowed her eyes as she looked to the source—a battery powered work lamp. The light had been positioned just on the other side of the wall to illuminate the doorway.
It was smart, she thought. The rest of the church was bathed in darkness, but as soon as someone walked through the entrance to the main room, they would be lit up as plain as if they stood in the afternoon sun.
The light might have been smart, but it only meant that she had to be fast. As long as she kept her eyes away from the fluorescence, her vision would be cl
ear by the time she slunk back into the shadows.
With one last deep breath to steady her nerves, she spun around on one foot and snapped up her arms to level the barrel of her weapon in the direction of the altar. Her shuffle to the side and out of the halo of light was quick, and she didn’t let her aim falter as she moved.
At the front of the church, she spotted one shadowy figure, and then another. Clarity returned to her vision in short order, and before she had a chance to take in the scene, she lined up her sights with the man’s head.
With Kilroy’s head. The Preacher’s head.
The glow from the work light caught the polished steel of a handgun as Kilroy pressed the barrel to the temple of the woman he had grabbed to use as a shield. That was why the light had been there, she realized. He hadn’t expected the brightness to throw her off so much as he had wanted to buy himself time to snatch up Bree.
“Well, well.” The corner of Kilroy’s mouth turned up in a self-assured smirk as he clucked his tongue. “‘Bout time you showed up, little lady. I was startin’ to get impatient, even wondered for a second there if you were goin’ to come at all. It’s been a long time, Winter. And my, my how you’ve grown into such a lovely young woman.”
His gaze was like a spider crawling up her skin, and as much as she wanted to hurl insults at him, lash out at him, her mouth was dry as bone.
This man killed her parents.
This man took her little brother.
This man changed her life irrevocably, at his demented whim.
“It really is a shame, you know that?” he went on after licking his dry lips. “A shame you decided to follow that same sinful path as your momma. Now, your momma, there was a beautiful woman, I tell you what. And you, girlie, you look just like her.”
At a pace that was barely perceptible even to her, Winter crept forward and tried to adjust her aim to the creep’s forehead. Bree’s dark eyes were wide, but as she followed Winter’s movement, she was calm.
“If you get a shot, take it.” Bree’s voice wasn’t panicked, not even strained.
“Yeah,” Winter replied through clenched teeth. She knew that ensuring Bree’s safety was their primary focus, but she couldn’t let Kilroy off that easily. One way or another, she had to find out what had happened to her brother.
And now that there was a gun to Bree’s head, she had to do it fast.
“You ladies sure about that?” Kilroy chided. Though quiet, his chortle was eerie and unsettling.
“What, you think I need someone’s permission to blow off your fucking head?” Winter snapped, happy to hear the strength in her voice she didn’t feel. “You know that’s a federal agent you’ve got in front of you like a human shield, right? You know what the penalty is for killing a federal agent? Well, just in case you don’t, I’ll tell you.”
“Death,” Bree added for her, then tightened her jaw when the gun pressed harder against her temple.
Winter’s heart thumped wildly in her chest. “She’s right,” she said. “It’s death, Kilroy. Death by lethal injection. And since it’s a Federal offense, that means Virginia or North Carolina’s death penalty laws don’t have any bearing on it. It doesn’t matter where it happens, they’re still going to be able to jam a needle in your arm after you’re convicted. And, let me tell you, Douglas, other cops don’t take kindly to the death of their own.”
“Maybe.” His smirk widened as he chuckled again, that same, disquieting sound. “But I reckon you’d have to take me out of here in cuffs if you want any of that stuff you just said to come true. And here’s the deal, girlie. Maybe you get that shot you’re after. Maybe I stick my old head out just a little bit too far and you take your shot. Well, what then?”
Winter gritted her teeth. “Do it,” she countered.
“You see this?” As he paused, he gruffly jammed the steel handgun even harder into Bree’s temple. “My finger’s already on the trigger, ya’see? Now, maybe I’m just an old timer, and maybe my reflexes aren’t quite what they used to be back in ‘Nam, but I’m not quite old enough for them to be slow. You go ahead and pull that trigger when you get a shot, girlie, but I can already tell you what’ll happen. In that last split-second before I die, my hand’ll seize up, and then your friend here will go right down to that floor with me.”
Winter cursed under her breath because she knew he was right.
The bastard chuckled. “Now, maybe you’ll get lucky, and you’ll make that one-in-a-million shot. Do you know the one I’m talking about?” With his free hand, Kilroy tapped a gnarled finger against Bree’s pursed lips. “Right there, girlie. That’s where you’ve got to hit me if you want all the nerves in my body to shut down right away. You see, right here, that’ll blow my brainstem out the back of my head. No twitching, no nothing. It’s the same shot they train snipers to make in the military, and I’d be willing to bet that it’s the same shot they train your federal agent friends to make too.”
He was right. Winter knew he was right—she could recall the lesson from her time at Quantico.
“Not very ladylike to be waving a gun like that around, anyway, is it? I tell you what, girlie. You drop that weapon, set it on the floor nice and slow, you got it? You’ve got ‘til the count of five or I blow this little lady’s head clean off her shoulders.”
Winter didn’t need her enhanced sensory ability to know that Kilroy would follow through with his threat.
“Fine,” she snapped. Both arms raised, she eased her finger away from the trigger as she crouched down to set the handgun on the floor.
As she lowered the weapon, a flicker of movement from just below Bree’s stomach caught her eye. The motion slow and measured, Bree slid one wrist free of her binds and wiggled her fingers like she was a baseball catcher signaling their next play.
No wonder she hadn’t been panicked, Winter thought.
“There you go, Kilroy,” Winter sneered. “Now, let me ask you something, huh? All the women you’ve murdered over the last few months, sure seems like you were trying to kill me, doesn’t it?”
He opened his mouth to object, but she cut him off.
“No, don’t deny it, Kilroy. You’re losing it, aren’t you? Maybe those reflexes of yours are just as catlike as they’ve always been, but I don’t think you’re all that sharp anymore, are you? You legitimately thought that you were killing me when you went for those women, didn’t you?” With a mocking laugh, she shook her head. “You did. How senile are you, old man?”
His face went cold as stone. “I’m not—”
She laughed, cutting him off. “You know, you’ve always been like this otherworldly monster, but let me tell you something I just realized. You aren’t an otherworldly monster. You’re just an old man, past his prime, trying to cling to whatever he can to preserve his relevance. You’re scared, aren’t you, Kilroy? Scared that time’s going to forget you, that come tomorrow, no one’s going to remember your name.”
Did his bottom lip tremble? Winter watched him closely for another tell.
She sneered, looking him up and down. “Or, if they do, they aren’t going to remember you as The Preacher. No, not at all. See, they’ll do an autopsy of your body after you die here tonight, and they’ll be able to see all the abnormalities in your brain. That’s the only definitive way to diagnose Alzheimer’s, did you know that, Kilroy? An autopsy, where they slice up your brain like bologna. Is that what you think they’ll find? Because that’s what I think they’ll find.”
“I—”
She didn’t let him finish. “And then that’ll get out to the press, and that’s all anyone will remember you as. You’ll only be known as that old, senile man who went after women in their sleep because he was too fucking scared to confront them otherwise. That’s why you’re doing this all, anyway, isn’t it? Because, deep down, you’re scared of women. You grew up with such a strong hatred of women that now you’ve got to take out all that rage on us because somewhere in the back of your mind you’re worried that you�
�re not good enough.”
“Enough!” Kilroy’s shout echoed through the high ceiling with so much force she thought the roof might cave in. He was pissed—livid, even.
In a blur, Bree clamped one hand down on his forearm, pushed his aim away from her head, and snapped her elbow back into his face. Even from where she stood, Winter heard the satisfying crunch of popping cartilage as the blow connected with his nose.
Before the roar of pain escaped the old man’s lips, Bree had taken hold of his hand and jerked his wrist backwards. With a clatter, the stainless-steel handgun fell to the floor.
As soon as Bree scooped up the weapon, Winter closed the distance, arced her right arm backwards, and swung for the bastard’s face with all the strength she could muster. The force of the blow ached along her tensed muscles, but she pushed the sensation from her thoughts as she reared back for another swing. When her fist connected with his cheekbone that time, she felt a sting as her knuckles split open from the collision.
“Winter,” a voice, Bree’s voice, called. “I’ve got a shot if you move out of the way.”
“Hold on!” Winter shouted. He couldn’t die. Not yet.
“Don’t,” Kilroy wheezed. “Don’t you want to know what happened to your brother, girlie?” With one olive drab sleeve, he made a vain attempt to stop the flow of blood from his ruined nose.
“Do you really think you’re in a position to bargain right now, Kilroy?” Winter’s voice was so cold, she hardly recognized it as her own.
“Do you think he’s still alive?” The question brimmed with mocking derision, and for a split-second, she wanted to yell at Bree to take her shot. She wouldn’t, though. For Justin’s sake, she would keep this sick bastard alive until he finally told her the truth.
She clamped her hand down on the front of his shirt to hold him in place as she prepared to land another concussive blow. The rage that flooded through her veins with each beat of her heart was all-consuming. Her mind was devoid of rational thought as she clenched her hand back into a fist.